[P] You lift me up and I am found

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*   Asterion is not surprised to hear she’s never read a book - he would be more so if she knew how to read at all. Ravos was not a land of ink and pages, of buildings and silks - and neither, he knows, was the Rift. Once he would have thought them better for it; now he wonders whether anything is better at all. “I’ve not read many,” he admits, “and it was in Terrastella that I was taught to read…I hear the library in the Dawn Court is the grandest in Novus, if it is something that interests you.” It used to be difficult for him, to remember the one that first introduced him to reading - the kirin who so twisted things, darkening Novus for so long. But it is all past now, swept away by the tide of time, no matter what damages had been done. Still he is not sorry when the topic shifts like a bird in flight - he even smiles, despite the danger they speak of. “Yes,” he agrees simply, but his attention sharpens on Katniss as she continues. It is more difficult for him than it ought to be, to picture danger here (when it had so recently been a fact). Tonight was for magic, tonight was because they had persevered against the gods and against the disasters they wrought. But Katniss is right, and Asterion nods, his dark ears twisting, no matter how unwilling he is to entertain the thought of further tragedy. He meets her gaze and is surprised by the intensity in it - and it takes him a moment to realize what he is asking. But by the time she questions him outright he is smiling (however wryly at the thought of sparring somebody as battle-hardened as her). “It would be my honor to,” he says, “though I must warn you I am terribly dangerous-” and by now he laughing again, the wine like starlight in his blood. The music has picked up again, from a haunting waltz to something like bounds like a stream, notes scattering like starlings. “Let us do it soon,” he says in a break in the song, “for my people and I must return home. We have been gone too long.” For a moment he falls silent again, his gaze straying once more across the hall. All at once he feels the need to move, to walk among the people or out into the night, to taste the summer bonfires on the wind and let the moonlight soak into his skin. To dance, and to drink, and in so doing defy what violence has tried and tried again to bring the people he loves low. So he turns back to the mare with a smile, taking in the sight of her with the peacock feathers curling from her mask, echoing the silver filagree of his own. How different they will look, upon the battlefield. “I look forward to it, Katniss. I am glad you are here - and I hope you enjoy the rest of the night. It is quite a world Isra has built for us all.” With that he presses his muzzle briefly against her shoulder, a parting gesture - and then he gives a last grin to the masked mare, and steps away into the crowd to be swallowed up by music and bodies. @Katniss wrapping it here - but I'll get a spar post up this weekend!